Realizing A Personalized Shopping Experience
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- The average U.S. citizen over the age of 12 spent more than 100 hours in 2011 accessing content on wireless devices, such as smartphones, computer tablets and e-readers. - The average person spends about 400 hours per year on the internet, with about one-quarter of the time is spent on social media sites. - Over 285 million mobile phones were operating in the U.S. in 2011, of which about 34% were smartphones and consumer end users will make up the majority by 2016. - Over 600 million tablets will be in use worldwide by 2016. These customers now expect all information, contacts, news, applications, services and products to come to them in any easy-to-access location, personalized and customized to suit their individual needs. To deliver these experiences, organizations will need to design content and services that can feed all channels used, whether it is field sales, a store location or the Internet (presented on any device, site or platform). The rising sales of iOS applications have shown that usability and convenience are of real value. A personalized buying experience, enabled by Smarter Commerce, delivers the tools to improve relationships with connected customers.
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Realizing A Personalized Shopping Experience
- 1. Realizing a Personalized On-‐line Shopping Experience Next-‐Genera:on eCommerce for Communica:ons Service Providers Smarter Commerce for Communica:ons © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 2. Today’s connected customers are relying more and more on ecommerce to browse and buy communica5ons offerings → Connect Me → Know Me → Show Me → Guide Me → Support Me 2 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 3. Digital commerce is leading the growth in sales and will con5nue to do so for the foreseeable future “If I had to guess, social Forecasted growth by 2014 commerce is the next to blow up…” 98% 184% – Mark Zuckerberg 84% Predicted Social Commerce Growth (in billions $USD) 71% 35 30 204% 88% 25 20 Rest of 15 World 10 U.S. 104% 5 0 2011 2012 2013 2015 2014 $102.4 $90.5 $54.5 $9.5 $8.9 $2.6 $1.6 2009 annual e-‐commerce spend in billions $USD 3 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 4. Connected customers are also showing a growing preference for using emerging on-‐line channels to browse and buy Mobile commerce is accelera:ng the growth of eCommerce 79% Use phone for shopping related ac:vi:es 70% Use phone while shopping in-‐ store 74% Of shoppers purchased as a result of using the phone Sources: comScore and thinkmobile 4 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 5. What makes a customer valuable? influencer Historical customer life:me value statement = customer spend + customer loyalty New customer life:me value statement = total influenced customer and network spend + loyalty 90 63 percent of customers trust percent of users choose recommenda5ons by friends consumer ra5ngs as their more than tradi5onal preferred source of adver5sing informa5on about services 5 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 6. Fracturing of the tradi5onal ‘eCommerce’ channel has created the need for providers to enable a singular on-‐line experience With over 20%* of telecom customers desiring to use online systems as their primary means of ordering new services and end user devices, service providers must provide a consistent and compelling experience across digital channels 1995 2000 2005 2010 Portals Web chat Search Engine Op5miza5on Social Networking Viral Marke5ng Virtual User Communi5es * Source: Analysys Mason 6 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 7. Communica5ons service providers have to accommodate more complexity than most in their digital commerce channels Credit Score 3rd Party Installa:on Network Capacity CPE Inventory Customer Facing Services Reseller Contract Status Customer Inventory Billing History Resource Facing Services The service provider is Smartphone Op:ons rewarded with This complexity is difficult enough advocacy, to accommodate with a human increased involved – through a digital spend and channel it’s considerably more so. reduced churn. A guided selling solu:on reduces customer experience expenses like :me, effort, anxiety and confusion and increases experience rewards like convenience, ease of use and 7 personal touch. © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 8. The demands of connected customers call for service providers to enable a personalized shopping experience across all digital channels 1 23 Service Provider eCommerce must become omni guided precise A personalized shopping experience ini:a:ve will enable service providers to deliver a compelling and differen:ated buying experience to customers as they engage across digital channels. 8 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 9. IBM’s Smarter Commerce approach and integrated por[olio enables a personalized on-‐line shopping experience in communica5ons Sourcing, Targeted and Personalized Shopping Experience controlling and personalized Gives your customers the control to determine procurement of marke:ng across when and how they buy on-‐line including the goods and services. all customer ability to personalize what they buy to their unique interac:ons needs and requirements. Buy Market IBM Websphere Commerce (Omni-channel Sales + Social) Service Sell IBM Sterling Configurator (Guided Ordering) Servicing customer Selling and fulfillment needs across all of products and Interac:on services across IBM WebSphere Commerce & Coremetrics channels all channels (Precision Marketing) Smarter Commerce Lifecycle 9 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 10. 1 Omni-‐channel enables a unified on-‐line ordering experience across digital channels mobile web Mobile usage is exploding and is expanding to The web con5nues to grow in usage by customers as a omni more devices omni = preferred method of shopping common experience set top social The next shopping Social commerce is CSPs need to strive for revolu5on may be the home becoming a key contributor through providing the same user entertainment experience – television recommenda5ons and referrals experience throughout all digital channels. cross-‐channel commerce framework 10 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 11. Suppor5ng cross-‐channel interac5ons consistently is cri5cal in aarac5ng and cap5va5ng connected customers Service providers must meet the connected customer’s demand for a seamless and consistent buying experience across mul:ple channels Cross-‐Channel Interac:ons Cross-‐Channel Suppor:ng how customers want to buy On-‐line Mobile Social Call Center Retail Cross-Channel Coordination & Unified Cart Mul:-‐Site Targe:ng what Brand Site 3 Brand Site 4 Brand Site 1 Brand Site 2 customers want Mobile VOD & IPTV Games Apps to buy Content Enhanced Experience Intelligent Search & Social Personalized Flexible Differen:a:ng the Comparison Communi:es Recommend-‐ Content Pricing brand with a:ons customer-‐centric capabili:es 11 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 12. The mobile channel is becoming the most dominant commerce channel and robust support is cri5cal to success for CSPs The Smarter Commerce approach enables service providers to offer customers a rich mobile storefront for several mobile devices and plamorms Rich Mobile Storefronts: ü Product naviga:on and Search ü Cross-‐channel inventory and pricing ü Loca:on based marke:ng and promo:on ü Buy-‐Online, Pickup-‐In-‐Store or § Mobile phones Ship-‐To -‐ iPhone, Android, Blackberry and others ü Quick checkout profile for § Tablet devices smartphones -‐ iPad, Android, Playbook and others ü Barcode scan for product or § Mobile Browser (JSP, HTML5 and marke:ng landing page CSS3) § Hybrid Applica:ons (Android, iOS, …) ü Voice search for product informa:on § Na:ve Applica:ons (Android…) -‐ WC REST interface for server content ü Store locator with local maps -‐ Device features via direct na:ve API calls 12 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 13. Providing dynamic search and browse capabili5es are essen5al as customers use the mobile channel to facilitate their purchases The Smarter Commerce approach simplifies how customers get to informa:on Landing Result Product Faceted Page Ranking Recommenda:on Naviga:on WC Cross Channel Precision Marke:ng Engine 2 Rules-‐Driven Search Results WC Triggers WC Search Op:miza:on 1 Storefront Framework Auto Suggest Spell Correc:on internet broadband Apache Search Third smartphone internet Did you mean: “broad band” Solr Adapter Party high-‐speed internet “broadcast” “bandwidth”? Crawler Search internet modem wireless internet Phrase Wildcard high speed internet And* phone 13 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 14. Extending a service provider’s brand to social and partner channels helps services provider’s broaden their market presence The Smarter Commerce approach enables service providers take full advantage of social dialogs to enhance on-‐line sales Extended Digital Interac:ons: ü Customers and partners to share products, lists and other content on social networks and any third-‐ Promo:ons party Internet site Social Networks ü Facebook integra:on with ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ burons Buying ü Support product ra:ngs and Service Provider Extended Digital reviews by integra:ng with third-‐ Brand Partners party vendors Sharing ü Social bridging allowing shoppers to use their exis:ng social networking ID to create social Aggregators content 14 14 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 15. An omni-‐channel shopping experience is completed by coordina5ng on-‐line interac5ons with tradi5onal channels The Smarter Commerce approach helps service providers increase on-‐line sales close rates by enabling customers to get help as needed Cross-‐Channel Coordina:on: ü Co-‐shopping enables customer service representa:ve to assist customers with their on-‐line experience ü Customers can share their shopping Customer experience with service service reps can be representa:ves available ü Business user interface for Customer 24/7 ... and Care management tasks (e.g. create, customers modify, delete and assign queues get the associated with customers) help they need. ü Mul:-‐customer queue support and re-‐route 15 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 16. Smarter Commerce enables personalized on-‐line shopping by allowing customers to browse and order across any digital channel Key Benefits: § Meet and exceed customer expecta:ons for anywhere, any:me buying Personalized Shopping § Delivers a seamless, branded buying experience across Experience – Omni Channel channels § Enable search, browse, § Extend brand reach order, and checkout across digital channels Solu:on in Ac:on: § Deliver a mobile-‐oriented § European service provider sought to create mul:-‐channel buying experience across ordering environment for new IP-‐based on-‐demand video device OSs § Extend customer interac:on service to social and partner § IBM implemented a mul:-‐channel eCommerce solu:on channels using WebSphere Commerce § Coordinate on-‐line interac:ons with call center § Solu:on enables customers to buy via on-‐line, mobile, and set-‐top box channels § Extensive use of on-‐line social sharing (reviews, recommenda:ons, and ra:ngs) facilitates sales © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 17. 2 Guided ordering simplifies on-‐line ordering increasing customer’s ability to personalize their purchases guided mobile web Mobile usage is The web con5nues to exploding and is grow in usage by expanding to customers as a more devices omni = preferred method of shopping common experience set top social CSPs need to remove The next shopping revolu5on Social commerce is becoming a key the complexity and fric:on may be the home entertainment contributor through recommenda5ons and in on-‐line ordering to truly experience – television referrals enable a personalized cross-‐channel commerce framework shopping experience. guided ordering 17 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 18. To increase on-‐line sales close rates and revenue, service providers must make it easy for customers to navigate the ordering process Allows customers to tackle even the most complex current and future product configura:on and offer crea:on scenarios with confidence § Create a guided ordering experience Configure Products, Services, § Clearly suggest and explain op:ons Op5ons § Validate oven -‐-‐ errors prevented up front Service Choice Dependent Validate § Selec:ons can be used to make Op5on Op5on Availability recommenda:ons or guide the Choice Product Choice configuring user Gather Choice Data Op5on Op5on Choice Incompa:ble Choice Configured Solu:on & Order 18 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 19. Guided ordering facilitates customer decisions, removes anxiety, and gives customers the confidence to complete orders on-‐line The Smarter Commerce aproach integrates guided ordering into the on-‐line ordering process to guide customers to making valid purchase and ordering decisions Integrated guided ordering: On-‐line Ordering ü Guides customers hrough valid decisions and ac:ons when Guided Guided Order adding, changing or removing Selec:on Configura:on Valida:on products ü Fully validates feasibility of order Bundle ac:ons to ensure order accuracy Product 1 Product 2 Product 3 Product 4 ü Enables the business to model configura:on flow and rules to Op5on 1 Op5on 2 Op5on A Op5on B Op5on C provide the op:mal customer order flow ü Designed to handle highly Service Availability complex communica:ons ordering requirements A and B or C are mutually exclusive 19 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 20. 3 Precision is the key to marke5ng directly to a par5cular consumer regardless of channel mobile web Mobile usage is exploding and is The web con5nues to grow in usage by precise expanding to customers as a more devices omni = preferred method of shopping common experience set top social CSPs need to embrace The next shopping Social commerce is revolu5on becoming a key eCommerce as an ac:ve may be the home contributor through entertainment recommenda5ons and marke:ng plamorm rather experience – television referrals than a passive ordering cross-‐channel commerce framework plamorm guided ordering precision marke:ng 20 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 21. The Smarter Commerce approach integrates precision marke5ng into key eCommerce processes to deliver true personaliza5on omni-‐ 10% average upliv in channel sales by making interac:on personal recommenda:ons Who is my and offers to customers customer and what do they 2/3 of smartphone users precision marke:ng want? online analy:cs say they would share personal info to reap addi:onal benefits of personalized services. 21 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 22. Precision marke5ng enables services providers to personalize the buying experience The Smarter Commerce approach enables service providers to automate, extend and adapt marke:ng strategies to personalize the experience for their customers Precision Marke:ng: ü Automated and dynamic offers Triggers Ac:ons based on preference and inten:on ü Extend personalized marke:ng by using browsing behavior and transac:on history to trigger offers mobile social commerce promo:ons mobile and promo:ons Precision ü Adap:ve personalized marke:ng to Marke:ng support on-‐going dialog with order history browsing cross/up sell point of sale customers, over :me, across channels (including emails, SMS, landing pages, etc.) ü Business tooling to define offers, personaliza:on search email kiosk campaigns, on-‐line behavior, etc. 22 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 23. Example of solu5on in ac5on: Precision marke5ng presen5ng personalized offer based on specific customer behavior Scenario: Reward a customer for par:cipa:ng in the online review of services products by issuing a coupon Add to Ac:ve Change Banner $10 Off Next Order Customer Writes 5 Reviews Par:cipant Segment (Online Channel Ac5vity) CUSTOMER REVIEWS Overall Rating Send $10 Off SMS Coupon (Dialogue Ac5vity) Thank you for your WRITE A REVIEW > review. Receive $10 off your next purchase! Customer writes 5 reviews on a services provider site. The 5th The customer is added to the review triggers an ac:on by the Ac:ve Social services The customer receives a text precision marke:ng engine Par:cipant customer segment message for a $10 off coupon on his next services purchase and the banner on the services storefront is personalized to include a $10 off 23 coupon. © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 24. Example of solu5on in ac5on: Precision marke5ng integra5ng extended channels into the marke5ng mix Scenario: Promote a new subscrip:on internet television service for a spor:ng event using an e-‐marke:ng spot on social services sites like Facebook Send Email: Thank you for Customer places order your order for video subscrip:on service The customer The customer is The Branch to the Customer Customer sees clicks on a deal added to the customer first path for navigates away recommenda:on of the week e-‐ customer registers which and does not for sports video spot for a live segment: at the customer place order tournament sports video Facebook deal services qualifies bundle subscrip:on of the week provider service on website Facebook © 2012 IBM Corporation 24
- 25. Precision marke5ng takes advantage of robust web and social analy5cs to gather a complete picture of customer behavior The Smarter Commerce approach integrates web analy:cs into eCommerce processes so service providers can op:mize the on-‐line experience and increase the value delivered to connected customers Integrated web analy:cs: ü Track performance of web-‐ site, sales, and campaigns ü Track impact of messages and brand engagement across all digital channels ü Analyze and refine customer experience based on insight 25 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 26. Using web analy5cs can lead service providers to implement even greater personaliza5on such as a segment specific micro-‐sites The Smarter Commerce approach delivers extended-‐sites capabili:es enabling a services provider to deploy sites for specific customer groups or brands Extended Sites: Search for category Browse selec5ons Select movie Preview trailer ü Create custom micro-‐sites for Checkout Download specific brands, customer segments or geographical marketplaces Brand Site 1 Brand Site 2 Brand Site ite 3 Brand S 3 ü Personalize content for each micro-‐ Games Apps Mobile VOD site based on defined business rules Content and policies Catalog/ Catalog/ Catalog/ Content Content Content ü Share assets across mul:ple micro-‐ Business Page Page Business Page Page Business Page sites with one set of developers Assets Logic Logic Assets Logic Logic Assets Logic Extended Sites ü Enable partners to build their own Inherit, Reference, Override partner-‐specific storefronts and add Business their own items Catalog /Content Assets Page Logic Base Site 26 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 27. Smarter Commerce delivers greater personaliza5on through through ac5on based, targeted and invidualized offers Key Benefits: § Users have achieved two :mes higher results in: Personalized Shopping § Customer reten:on rates Experience – Precision Marke:ng § Profitability per customer § Uses customer’s profile, § Profitability per customer transac:on historical and behavioral § Percent of customers purchasing mul:ple products or informa5on to deliver a services personalized shopping experience Solu:on in Ac:on: § Ini5ate marke5ng ac5on triggered by specific § On-‐line retailer and media company sought a solu:on that customer ac5on could op:mize a user’s shopping experience by § Track behavior and automate automa:cally displaying addi:onal relevant items ongoing dialog with the throughout the browsing and purchasing process. customer to adapt to changes over5me § Wanted recommenda:ons to be based on both browsing and purchase behavior. § Implemented Coremetrics intelligent offer helping double conversion rate for recommended items 27 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 28. The Smarter Commerce approach delivers a personalized on-‐line shopping experience for communica5ons service providers Make it easier, faster, and more sa:sfying for customers to purchase and manage services products across online, mobile, social and related channels to deliver greater customer value. Ini:a:ves to enable personalized Benefits shopping experience: § Meet and exceed customer expecta5ons for anywhere, any5me buying Omni-‐channel interac:ons to seamlessly § Deliver a seamless, branded buying engage with customers across channels experience across channels § Personalize the buying experience to specific Guided ordering to simplify complex ordering and deliver greater personaliza5on segments and regions § Automate marke5ng ac5ons to reduce costs Precision marke:ng to personalize § Increase revenue via crea5ve purchase customer experience op5ons § Capitalize on social and mobile commerce Web analy:cs to analyze, measure and § Understand and an5cipate customer behavior refine the customer experience turning insights into ac5ons 28 © 2012 IBM Corporation
- 29. Genng Started with Smarter Commerce -‐ Customer value strategy and engagement assessments Customer Value Strategy • The Smarter Commerce Customer Value Accelerator – helps clients rethink the business model by: – Understanding the new set of possibili:es created by customer experience transforma:on – Priori:zing the value proposi:ons to focus on those with the greatest poten:al – Characterizing the possibili:es into a set of customer journeys/experiences – Defining the business capabili:es needed to opera:onalize the new value proposi:on Customer & Partner Engagement • The Smarter Commerce Cross-‐Channel Experience Assessment – helps clients op5mize channel strategy to maximize value by: – Developing a cross-‐channel strategy that reflects current consumer trends & priori:es – Iden:fying, analyzing and priori:zing cross-‐channel opera:on model innova:ons – Crea:ng journey maps of key events to characterize the future-‐state of the customer experience 29 29 © 2012 IBM Corporation
Notes de l'éditeur
- The average U.S. citizen over the age of 12 spent more than 100 hours in 2011 accessing content on wireless devices, such as smartphones, computer tablets and e-readers.The average person spends about 400 hours per year on the internet, with about one-quarter of the time is spent on social media sites.Over 285 million mobile phones were operating in the U.S. in 2011, of which about 34% were smartphones and consumer end users will make up the majority by 2016.Over 600 million tablets will be in use worldwide by 2016.These customers now expect all information, contacts, news, applications, services and products to come to them in any easy-to-access location, personalized and customized to suit their individual needs. To deliver these experiences, organizations will need to design content and services that can feed all channels used, whether it is field sales, a store location or the Internet (presented on any device, site or platform). The rising sales of iOS applications have shown that usability and convenience are of real value.A personalized buying experience, enabled by Smarter Commerce, delivers the tools to improve relationships with connected customersKey capabilities of personalized buying experience include:Extending the buying experience to multiple channels – like mobile, social, Tailoring customer interactions to customer traits by collecting and analyzing customer behaviorContinuously refining the approach by using dashboards and Key performance indicators to gain visibility and insight into customer actions and act accordinglySatisfy customer needs through new purchase options by providing a variety of methods for buying content (like subscriptions)Enhancing customer engagement through targeted promotions and offers delivered on intelligent storefronts across channelsContinuously analyzing interaction performance gleaned from across interaction points to make better strategic decisions.- Extend the buying experience to multiple channels. This is similar to the scenario just presented where the customer was able to complete a purchase for movie across a mobile, social network or set top box.Enabling a consistent experience across multiple sales and service channels that creates a compelling customer experience. To ultimately redefine the value proposition by using physical and digital products to create new value by understanding the customer and delivering quality content and experiences wherever they are.A Smarter commerce approach to delivering a personalized buying experience can help our services customers more effectively market sell services products and services improving margins, creating new revenue streams and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of how they execute commerce across channels.http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/10/gartner-tablets-apple-ipad-dominate/http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/167228/mobile-social-media-revenue-accelerating-at-30.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+research-brief+(MediaPost+%7C+Research+Brief#ixzz1wGXJpywROverall mobile Internet usage will exceed desktop Internet usage by 2014.- 2011 GBS Thought Leadership White Paper: Smarter Channels: Which Channel Will You Bet On?Today, approximately 80 percent of online users have anaccount on a social networking site such as Facebook.- 2011 IBV CRM Study Analysis: From Social Media to Social CRM –What Customers Want.2011 Coremetrics Whitepaper: Building lift and loyalty with personal product recommendationshttp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/zzw03062usen/ZZW03062USEN.PDF
- E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet and it has changed dramatically from the days of an Amazon.com and eBay launch back in 1995. Over the past few years the combination of an explosion in mobile smart devices as well as continued growth in overall Internet access is providing the foundation for continued growth worldwide for eCommerce and in particular some of it’s newest iterations such as social commerce.http://mediaserver.pulse2.com/uploads/2011/07/fcommerce-infographic.jpghttp://www.capturecommerce.com/blog/general/forecast-for-global-ecommerce-growth/
- Overall mobile Internet usage will exceed desktop Internet usage by 2014.Approximately 80% of all online users have an account on a social networking site such as Facebook.Mobile commerce in particular will grow from $6 billion in 2011 to $31 billion by 2013.While all the micro-channels within eCommerce overlap and continue to emerge it make sense to talk about mobile in particular because it’s really an enabling channel to get to things such as mCommerce web sites, games, apps or social commerce solutions – but support for its usage is critical for any retailer, including CSPs.The Smarter Commerce approach supports mobile web, hybrid and native applications for the mobile industry.http://www.strangeloopnetworks.com/resources/infographics/mobile-infographics/the-growth-of-mobile-commerce/
- With the explosion of social media a new dynamic has been introduced that changes our ecommerce customer lifetime value statement. Traditionally customers have been considered valuable if they either spend a large amount of money with a provider or show they are loyal. With the considerable influence accommodated through social networking that view point is changing. The new customer lifetime value statement includes not only a direct customer but their entire influenced network – however understanding, tracking and measuring this total revenue impact requires sophistication beyond what most service providers have utilized in the past.http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/02/03/matrix-companies-should-factor-social-influence-in-total-customer-lifetime-value/
- Even before the fracturing began within the eCommerce channel, providing a consistent customer experience coordinated across multiple channelshas been an ongoing challenge for many service providers. Traditionally silo-ed functions, a lack of knowledge and data sharing, and marketing incentives that do not promote customer-centric strategies or cross-enterprise collaboration have resulted in fractured customer experiences from one channel to the next.This ultimately hurts the brand, customer advocacy and the bottom line. The new micro-channel complexity merely exacerbates the problem, with customer expectations for a consistent, branded experience higher than ever before.Even for those that have organized themselves around their customers, it will not be easy to incorporate new channels into the mix. There are very few CSPs who have achieved this ‘nirvana’ in which customers can successfully complete their goals in each channel offered to them.Source: “IBM – Smarter Channels: Which Channels will You Bet On?”; June 2011
- CSPs have a much higher level of complexity to deal with than most industry verticals. If someone wants to order a large red sweater from L.L. Bean, L.L. Bean doesn’t care that they already ordered a blue sweater a week before – they will still sell the red sweater – no questions asked. CSPs usually do not have that luxury. If someone calls to order a home phone service it might be very important that a week before they ordered an IPTV and broadband Internet solution.It’s difficult enough to handle these complexities with a skilled and experience human being on the phone or in a storefront but it’s considerably more difficult to do with self-service solutions like those utilized in ecommerce channels. However, the ease-of-use and cost savings offered by ecommerce is too large to ignore – so how does a CSP overcome the deficiency?Through a guided-selling solution a CSP can provide top-tier assistance modeled through best practices to guide their self-service customers and untrained sales personnel through the process of ordering complex items to reduce customer concern and anxiety and increase potential spend and advocacy of their customers.
- The needs and demands of connected customers call for services providers to enable a personalized buying experienceA personalized buying experience initiative will enable services providers to deliver a compelling and differentiated buying experience to customers as they engage directly with services provider across digital channels. A personalized buying experience strategy should include the following elements in order for a services provider to deliver a compelling and differentiated buying experience to the connected customer. Omni:Can you seamlessly engage with your customers across multiple online channels with a single user experience?Social:Can you interact and analyze your customers within their preferred environments, the social networks?Personal:Can you support the different ways your customers want to buy services products and personalize the offers to meet a particular customers needs?This is a strategy of brand differentiation to drive revenue generation.
- A smarter commerce approach and integrated portfolio of commerce solutions enables you to offer a personalized buying experience to the connected customerA personalized buying experience involves a services provider moving beyond single channel ecommerce into a cross-channel or omni-channel commerce environment that makes it easier, faster, and more satisfying for customers to purchase and manage services and products across online, mobile, social, and related channels.Enabling a personalized buying experience is involves a services provider addressing four key initiatives:Multi-channel enablement: where providers can seamlessly engage with customers across multiple channels like mobile and socialPersonalized marketing – where providers use customer data gleaned from customer interactions to personalize offers and promotions with targeted content and pricing with the goal of enabling personalized engagementDynamic Catalog– where providers can offer a variety of payment methods to customers to increase the likely hood of purchaseWeb Analytics - where providers can collect and analyze data about customers in order to refine the customer experience and quickly respond to customer needs.The goal of delivering a more personalized buying experience is to deliver greater customer value that encourage customers to buy more and more often.
- “Omni” is defined as defined as “a combining form meaning ‘all’” – exactly what any online retailer, including CSPs should be striving for. A combined solution for all their digital channels – a unifying solution that brings together seamlessly the mobile, web, set top, app and social channels to create one experience for their customers.Combined with the complex product sets and components in the communications space this vision cannot be achieved without a solid foundation of capabilities supporting the channels. A cross-channel commerce framework, a common product configurator and universal guided selling are key capabilities needed to support an omni-channel experience.
- A personalized buying experience starts with enabling omni-channel interactions between a CSP and their customers. The Smarter Commerce approach inherently enables a service provider to create and manage storefronts across multiple channels including web, mobile, and even social. Anomni-channel interaction architecture enables the connected customer to browse and buy where and when they want to.In addition, this solution has the capability to not only enable the deployment of interactive, channel-specific storefronts, but also enable a business to create storefronts for specific customer segments or brands. For example, if you offer games and ringtones, the solution enables the CSP to create and maintain a specific site targeted at the teen segment and the associated demographic brand.Of course, these storefronts must be supported by robust omni-channel commerce capabilities like natural language search and intelligent offer recommendations that create a differentiated and compelling buying experience for the customer.
- While all the micro-channels within eCommerce overlap and continue to emerge it make sense to talk about mobile in particular because it’s really an enabling channel to get to things such as mCommerce web sites, games, apps or social commerce solutions – but support for its usage is critical for any retailer, including CSPs.The Smarter Commerce approach supports mobile web, hybrid and native applications for the mobile industry.http://www.strangeloopnetworks.com/resources/infographics/mobile-infographics/the-growth-of-mobile-commerce/
- Dynamic Search Capabilities:Search Optimization Framework (SOF) for optimized search experience through embedded marketing triggersSearch based triggers can be used to drive search-driven landing pages, search-based merchandising, search-based recommendations, content spotlighting, etcImproved eCommerce search though meaningful keywords and shorten website addresses
- The social channel is becoming increasingly more important tool for engaging with connected customers. As more connected customers use the social channel to share information as well as research what they want to buy, it essential that services provider extend their brand and commerce capabilities to the social channel. A personalized buying experience centers on enabling greater social interaction between a services provider and its customers. A Smarter Commerce approach takes customer interaction to the next level by shaping how a provider’s customers access, interact and experience theirbrand over social channels. With IBM capabilities, they can automatically and centrally manage their brand experience and marketing promotions across various social sites through business user tools and synchronize web promotions on their site with that of 3rd party sites like Facebook, and enable their customers to directly buy from the social site by directly linking to your on-line ordering capabilities. But enabling the presentation of promotions is part of the social experience. Today’s connected customers want to share and view information on the providers products and offers. To support this needs, the Smarter Commerce approach enables social bridging, which provides social networking capabilities that enable your on-line stores to support the open sharing of information within the storefront using external social IDs. Social bridging encourages shoppers to leverage their existing social networking sites and identities to extend the CSPs brand beyond their own ecommerce web site. Social bridging allows shoppers to use their established, external social networking IDs to create social content in your store. It also allows shoppers to leverage the social contributions they have made to your store on their personal external social networking sites.For example, Facebook integration allows shoppers to click and share their reviews. With a single click, shoppers to a CSPs site can share their finds with all of their Facebook friends using a Like button on the home page, Like and Send buttons on product pages, as well as an Activity Feed and log in support for Facebook. And it goes a step further by enabling marketing analysis of customers who participated in social commerce activities on your site. You can gather this information and then leverage precision marketing targeting promotions to shoppers who 'Liked' your home page or a product. With this approach, CSPs can greatly extend and enhance your relationship with customers via social channels, especially a new breed of customer called the influencer…
- Enabling mutli-channel interactions is the foundation of a personalized buying experience. Delivering multi-channel interactions is key in enabling you to meet and exceed connected customer expectations for anywhere, anytime buying. To give an example of this capability in practice, a European Video Service Provider embraced the Smarter Commerce approach and uses the multi-channel interaction capabilities of WebSphere Commerce to enable the ordering of video-on-demand across on-line, mobile, and set-to-box channels. The catalog, pricing, and ordering experience is seamless across those channels.Another example is a book retailer that sells academic books to university students in the US. With our capabilities, this book retailer has created, within one eCommerce platform, unique sites by university each with its own look and feel, content, products, and pricing. Each sits is targeted to the needs and culture of each university. However, a common checkout process is used across sites to improve management efficiency. These are just a couple examples of the smarter commerce approaches you can take to deliver a compelling and differentiated buying experience to your customers.
- According to research from Gartner Inc., global social commerce revenue is expected to hit $10.3 billion by the end of this year. That's an increase of 41.4% from 2010 and Gartner analysts predict that social media will stay on an upward trend, hitting an expected $29.1 billion in 2015.Facebook already has over $4 billion worth of merchandise listed on the site and Dell recorded $6 and a half million in direct sales from Twitter as early as 2010. Pinterest is the fastest growing social network in history and referrals from the new site are double those coming from Facebook.According to Carolyn Heller Baird, IBM's Communications Strategy Leader for Global Business Services in North America, “Approximately 90% of all the real-time information being created today is unstructured data. CMOs who successfully harness this new source of insight will be in a strong position to increase revenues, reinvent their customer relationships and build new brand value.”http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/28/google-plus-ghost-town/ (no mobile usage data included)http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1820015http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220717/Companies_slow_to_take_on_social_media_survey_findshttp://mashable.com/2009/12/08/dell-twitter-sales/http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/09/pinterest-drives-more-revenue-per-click-than-twitter-or-facebook/
- The complexity of many product and service bundles in the telecommunications space means that anxiety and trepidation are introduced for many customers. In order to make the experience simpler and easier across all online channels a robust product configurator and guided selling solution are needed.The IBM Smarter Commerce approach provides for rapid product and model creation to enable new products in the marketplace faster than ever before while reducing the ongoing maintenance and operating costs for changes and updates to products and services offerings.Since the product and service offerings are configured through an easy to use business center it makes enabling a guided selling solution for that product or service easily configurable at the time of bundle creation meaning more targeted and complex offerings can be created, reducing order errors before they happen and allowing for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities along the way.
- Guided ordering capabilities enables self-service and CSRs with less training to provide high level assistance for the ordering and configuration of complex solutions and bundles through an online interaction.
- Precision comes through personalization, the ability to reach out directly to a particular customer.
- Personalization must become a key corporate goal for CSPs with regards to their commerce initiatives, not just another feature added to their web site.Personalization is not a new idea in ecommerce as Amazon and Netflix have been using the concept for years. Personalization is the strategy of presenting options and offers to people based on what they are looking for, what they have found interesting in the past, what their friends have engaged with or based on declarative statements like their interests. Personalization has gotten a lot of positive attention recently because it can be used to make complex information into relevant, digestible and meaningful.Successful providers invest in personalization as a core value of how they do business – the same “customer-centric” philosophy employed by Smarter Commerce– rather than an add-on “feature.” In order to provide that they need a solution built with that purpose in mind.http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/zzw03063usen/ZZW03063USEN.PDFhttp://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2012/03/growth-of-mobile-commerce-infographic.html
- Let’s take a look at a Smarter Commerce scenario showing how a service provider might use precision marketing to improve the buying experience for a customer:The customer is a return customer who has written a number of reviews of various services products over time. This is valuable information for the provider and they want to reward or incent the customer for this type of behavior.Precision marketing is preset to reward such a customer after they have written 5 online reviews. The customer is added to a predefined customer segment called “Active Participant” and then either sent a text message offering a $10 off coupon or when the customer returns to the site, they will see an offer for $10 off their next services purchase. Thus the solution automatically segments customers based on behavior and takes actions based on that behavior to improve the overall relationship with the customer.
- Here is a second and more detailed scenario showing how precision marketing works within the context of social services.The scenario begins with a customer viewing an e-marketing widget for a sports subscription service on a friend’s Facebook page. The widget will appear on a Facebook page when a customer goes to a services provider storefront and chooses to recommend a certain deal on their Facebook profile. In this case the customer is viewing a friends page and happens to see this deal of the week posted.Upon clicking on the page, the customer is added to the customer segment Facebook deal of the week. After registering the customer may choose to place the order for the subscription or navigate away and browse something else. Depending on this trigger by the customer, precision marketing will either send them a thank you email or text for placing their order. Or it will recommend other offers intelligently based on this customers past and current behavior. In this case it might be to recommend a live sports video stream bundle that might better suit what the customer is looking for in order to save the sale.Ultimately the goal is to track and act on customer behavior in real time in order to deliver then best and most relevant offers to customers in order to make the information they view more valuable and increase the number of sales and revenue.
- Providers must develop deep understanding of the customer and how he or she makes their purchase decision. As the customer changes the provide must be able to adapt and refine the buying experience to continue to deliver value. With online web analytics service providers can develop a base of intelligence on which to build unique offers, promotions, custom storefronts, and social engagement.This is enabled by the ability to:Track performance of websites, sales, and campaignsTrack Impact of messages and brand engagement across channels like social and mobileAnalyze and refine the customer experience based on insight gathered about customer behavior over time.Web Analytics provides a complete picture of customer interactions to enable continuous experience refinement by services providers. First, service providers get a more comprehensive set of insights:Key performance indicators in real time so you know where you standBenchmark on how results compare to their peers in the communications industry( and sub-verticals), so they see immediately where they stand and where they have opportunity to improve.Dashboards and reports for business usersDeepest power user analysis for the most advanced analystsCapabilities for mobile site and app analytics And much more (e.g. API access, ability view reports in Excel, rich marketing attribution reporting, cross-session segmentation, etc. etc. etc.)Web Analytics can also be embedded more deeply into the enterprise and the CSP eco-system offeringDeep integration with ecommerce storefronts and single sign on that have been honed over the years. Self-service data feed capability.Web analytics is uniquely designed to allow a provider to domore than just to optimize a website and online ads but rather to go from insight to automated marketing action with just a few clicks to help turn visitors into repeat customers and loyal advocates over time byCollecting and analysing customer profiles to build granular visitor-activity profiles automatically.Selecting promising segments and configurig email or display ad campaigns to re-target or cross-sell or better service and “wow” their customers.
- Delivering a personalized buying experience requires that you target specific offers and promotions to individual customer segments.But what if you could take the even further and interact with these segments over specific commerce sites tuned with content, look and feel, offers, etc. tuned to that segment? That would certainly deliver a differentiated user experience.The Smarter Commerce approach enables multiple stores to be deployed on a common instance of software. The stores share a code base and business context configuration called an Asset Store and both the business context configuration and code base can be modified for each extended site (or microsite) to create a completely separate store and experience for the end user.The Extended Site capability is best explained using an example scenario:Suppose you wish to create a microsite named “Smarter Tennis”, leveraging your ecommerce site assets but configured separately to display a sub-set assortment of products, content, and user interface for tennis enthusiasts. To implement, your overall store would be used as the Asset Store and the “Smarter Tennis” store would be created. The Smarter Tennis micro-site can automatically inherit all elements of your core store. However, when a separate UI is applied and user configuration is applied using the Extended Site business tooling, the content, catalog assortment, and presentation for the “Smarter Tennis” micro-site can be completely different.The goal is to enable today’s service providers with the tools to flexibly design unique experiences targeted at specific customer segments. In this way, they can differentiate the experience to drive greater customer attraction and revenue.
- For CSPs who can bring a common ‘omni-channel’ and personal experience in the ecommerce micro-channels of mobile and social the rewards can be substantial – reduced cost, reduced time to market, increased customer advocacy, increased efficiency of campaigns and higher conversion rates on cross and up-sell activity.The IBM Smarter Commerce approach provides the foundations for helping CSPs take their first steps toward a personalized buying experience for their customers.
- Use customer value strategy and engagement assessments to help clients rethink business models and optimize channel strategy to maximize value.